From Freaking Out to High Functioning (ANS Course)

From Freaking Out to High Functioning is an on-demand coaching continuing education course from Newfield Network, led by Alexander Love (M.Ac., MCC). It earns 10 ICF CCE units and teaches coaches the practical neuroscience of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The course covers how the ANS functions, how it drives client stuckness and resistance, and how to bring that understanding into coaching conversations. Cost: $297 with permanent access to all recordings.

Alexander Love holds a Master of Acupuncture degree and an ICF MCC credential. His integration of ANS understanding into the Newfield ontological coaching framework developed through his work with Anna Chitty, his mentor in somatic and nervous system approaches. He created this course after observing a consistent pattern: clients who understood their patterns intellectually but remained unable to change them because their nervous systems were operating in survival mode beneath the coaching conversation.

The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) governs the body's survival responses, sympathetic activation in threat situations and parasympathetic responses at rest. When a client's nervous system is in survival mode, the brain's capacity for the kind of reflective, insight-driven change that coaching depends on is significantly reduced. What coaches often interpret as resistance, avoidance, or lack of follow-through may simply be the ANS protecting, exactly as it is designed to do. Understanding that distinction changes how coaches design conversations.

The course is structured around three movements. Discover covers how the ANS functions and how it affects client capacity for change. Practice teaches a specific regulation practice the coach can use personally and teach to clients, including the physiological mechanism behind the technique, not just the steps. Apply focuses on coaching conversations: how to recognize nervous system activation in a session, how to work with it rather than against it, and how to design conversations that support regulation rather than escalate activation.

No, though there is meaningful overlap. Somatic coaching is a broad discipline encompassing body-based awareness, movement, and embodied change, typically developed through a multi-month certification program. This course is specifically about ANS literacy for coaches: understanding the nervous system's role in client stuckness and learning to work with it in conversation. Coaches who complete this course gain a practical nervous system lens. Those who want deeper somatic coaching competency should look at Newfield's Applied Somatic Coaching Certification, which covers the full Somatic Coaching Competencies framework.

The course earns 10 ICF Continuing Coach Education (CCE) units, applicable toward renewing an existing ICF credential (ACC, PCC, or MCC). It is not an initial credentialing program. There are no prerequisites, and all recordings remain permanently accessible after purchase.

Coaches who develop ANS literacy typically report fewer sessions where clients intellectually understand what needs to change but can't do it. Instead of pressing on insight or accountability when a client is activated, a coach with ANS awareness can recognize the physiological state, adjust their approach, and help create the conditions for actual change. The course gives coaches language, observation skills, and specific tools for doing that without requiring a full somatic coaching credential.

This course suits coaches who work with clients who understand their patterns but cannot break them and have wondered why. It is also relevant for coaches who want a practical neuroscience lens without committing to a full somatic certification, coaches already working within Newfield's ontological framework who want to add ANS literacy to that foundation, and coaches seeking 10 ICF CCE units for credential renewal who want those credits to be genuinely useful. No coaching methodology prerequisites apply.

Completing From Freaking Out to High Functioning tells you the coach has studied Alexander Love's curriculum on the ANS's role in coaching, earned 10 ICF CCE units, and has a working framework for recognizing nervous system activation in sessions. It does not replace a full somatic coaching certification, an ICF credential, or clinical training. This course teaches coaches how the ANS influences client capacity for change. It does not train them to treat trauma, anxiety disorders, or other clinical conditions. A coach who has completed this course and also holds an ICF credential (ACC, PCC, or MCC) has more externally verified coaching competency than the course alone provides. Coaching is not therapy; if you're dealing with trauma or a clinical condition, ask your prospective coach how they determine when referral to a licensed therapist is appropriate.

Ask whether they hold any independent ICF or EMCC credentials alongside this course, since the ANS course provides CCE credits but not initial credentialing. Ask how they recognize nervous system activation in a coaching session and what they do differently when they notice it, since this reveals whether they've integrated the material or just completed the coursework. Ask what their approach is when what you're bringing sounds more like trauma or clinical anxiety than a coaching challenge, since the ANS course trains coaches to work with nervous system awareness in coaching contexts, not to provide clinical intervention. Coaches working in the ANS and somatic space should have a clear sense of where their scope ends and clinical referral begins.